We've done enough transformation projects to know that good planning can reap huge rewards in the long term, so this week I wanted to focus on AppTracker's planning capabilities. The data in the screenshot below is from a real-life Windows 8.1 migration currently in progress.

Overview: A large organisation want to mobilise their workforce by replacing legacy desktops with Windows 8.1 tablets and laptops. They use a software asset management (SAM) solution to discover which users use which applications. This produces a huge volume of data:

Over 3,000 apps in use in the organisation

700,000 application usage records appended daily with new data

The traditional approach for the applications team is to start getting the 3,000 apps ready for the new environment. This involves discovery, packaging, UAT, release to Live etc. Once most of the applications (80-90%) have been through the full readiness process we can start to migrate our users to Windows 8.1. The issue here is that we have to wait 12 months or more before these 3,000 applications are ready.

Thankfully there is a better way which will save a huge amount of time and money:

AppTracker Application Prioritisation ("AAP")

AppTracker Application Prioritisation

AAP allows you to specify how many applications the team can get ready each week. I chose 55 per week for this example. It's a big number, but there's a big team working on this one. AppTracker looks at the data feed from the software asset management solution, and works out which applications you need to get ready each week based on which application the business use the most. Because AppTracker knows which users need which applications, it can then tell you when each user is ready to migrate.

"With just 20% of the applications ready

we can migrate 79% of the users"

In the screenshot above each orange bar represents a week and the green line shows how many users are ready for migration on that week. The selected orange bar is 10 weeks into the project. At this point we have 20% of the applications ready, and we can migrate 79% of the users. This allows us to start the deployment phase of the project over six months earlier than is possible without AppTracker's planning capabilities. Now there's a cost saving that'll put a smile on the CFO's face...